A Software Systems Thinker Begins a Climate Journey
There’s no shortage of thinking on the problem of climate change and how it could be solved. So why am I adding my voice to the mix? Some background: I’m a tech product-management executive on my own “climate journey” — my eyes were opened to the problem by my partner, whose artistic cartography captures the fragility of incredible natural ecosystems that may soon cease to exist; my resolve was strengthened as I saw those ecosystems firsthand and became more aware of the broader human impacts of climate change; and I continue to be motivated by the knowledge that climate is the existential problem of our lifetime and the most important place to put my energy.
I’ve been on a journey of self-education over the last few months, reading a lot and talking to people. I’ve seen a tremendous amount of important and fascinating work combating climate change on many different fronts, from technology to finance to policy to activism and more. But as I’ve absorbed all this information, I’ve had a nagging feeling that something was missing. It finally clicked that I hadn’t yet seen a comprehensive view of the complex system that underpins the climate problem, a framework that pulls together all the forces, actors, and solutions involved into a unified picture.
I’ve felt that lack of system framing very acutely as I’ve sought my place in the climate space, my “pivot to climate”. I’ve spent my nearly-20-year software technology career as a systems thinker, figuring out how to drive difficult, strategic change by deeply unpacking systems and the first principles by which they operate, in domains as varied as healthcare, search, natural-language processing, big data analytics, consumer growth, enterprise partnerships, and developer platforms/tools. I’ve learned to build strategies that cut through competing priorities, harness underlying motivations, wield metrics as a tool for focus and alignment, and bring system forces to bear on each other to achieve change far bigger than what might otherwise be possible using just the resources under my direct control.
I feel a compelling need — and see real potential — to do the same with the system underpinning the climate problem, and it feels like this is how I can make the most difference in the space (especially since my background is in computer science, and not in biology, materials, or other climate-relevant hard sciences).
But to do so, I need that missing systems framework — the map of the climate change system that I haven’t yet found; a map I can use to understand the system and apply the toolbox of techniques I’ve developed over my career to drive change and better outcomes. And so that is the journey I’m now on, and that I’m going to share here with all of you, in the hopes that it can spur some interesting dialog and perhaps even help others exploring similar journeys.
Over my next several posts, I’m going to try to articulate what I see as the system underpinning our response to climate change, and then use the understanding it provides to explore potentially underinvested areas of opportunity and provoke some critical questions that aren’t getting as much discussion as they perhaps should.
I will warn you in advance that I’m taking off my commercial product manager hat for a bit to “wonk out” on systems, so if you’re reading this hoping for a quick answer and crisp product strategy for solving climate, you won’t find it. That said, all the great product, business, and change strategies I’ve seen (and have driven) are built on systems understanding and insight, so this journey should prove a worthwhile one despite its wonk-y focus.
I am eager for conversation and feedback, so please reach out and let me know what you think, especially if you’re also a systems thinker in the space! You can comment here or find me at abbrown at gmail.com.
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